


The Road To Anywhere But Here

by DesertScribe



Category: The Road to El Dorado (2000)
Genre: Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 13:52:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11209410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/pseuds/DesertScribe
Summary: These shoes weren't made for walking.





	The Road To Anywhere But Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darthneko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/gifts).



The gold was lost, but El Dorado was saved, and now they were left with nothing but the clothes on their backs, a horse, and the whole world spread out before them, begging to be explored. They had meant to head in the exact opposite direction of Cortes's army, but that plan had not even lasted until the end of their second day of travel. In the late afternoon, an hour or so before they were due to stop and make camp for the night, Altivo stumbled without warning on a seemingly flat stretch of ground, almost throwing all three of his riders (or all four if you counted the armadillo) to the ground in the process. Everyone managed to hold on, but only by pure luck. The former war horse caught his balance but for some reason was unable to recover his stride, so he limped along for a few more steps before slowing to a halt with a suspiciously sheepish look on his face. 

Miguel dismounted to assess the situation, because of the three of them he was the only one who knew slightly more than nothing about horses. Chel and Tulio dismounted as well, because the stop was as good of an excuse as any to get down and stretch. The armadillo remained happily sunning itself between Altivo's shoulder blades. It had been easy enough for Miguel to tell from the motion of Altivo's stumble and subsequent gait that the left rear leg was having the problem, so he went straight for that one, starting his examination at the flank and working his way down checking what he could by both sight and touch. When Miguel's hands neared the hoof, Altivo tried to sidle out of Miguel's grasp, but by then it was too late and Miguel had already seen exactly what the trouble was.

"Uh, guys," Miguel called to his... friends? Lovers? They were still in the process of working out what they were to each other, or at least they would be if they ever got around to actually discussing any of it. The activities that the three of them had gotten up to the previous night had been enjoyable for all, but Miguel wasn't sure if that hadn't just been the last lingering euphoria of their narrow escape, because none of them had seemed to want to be the first one to bring up the subject by the light of day the morning after. Miguel would have to worry about that later, though, because for the moment they had more pressing concerns.

"What is it? Is Altivo hurt?" Chel asked.

"No, he isn't hurt, but we have a definite problem here," Miguel said. "Take a look." He lifted Altivo's hoof so that Chel and Tulio could see the golden horseshoe that was now dangling crookedly from it by a single very loose golden nail, the other nails having been lost at various unknown points back along the trail. Even as they watched, a passing butterfly brushed against the horseshoe, causing the last nail to give up its hold and drop both nail and horseshoe onto the ground.

"Yeah, I'll say we have a problem," Tulio said as he bent down and snatched up the gold, then straightened and spun around to wave the offending objects accusingly under Altivo's nose. "You've been holding out on us, Altivo! Bad horse! Bad, bad horse!"

"It's worse than that," Miguel interjected before Tulio could work himself into too much of a lather over the matter. "We can't ride him like this."

"Why not? You said he wasn't hurt," Chel said.

"He's not hurt now, but riding him without a horseshoe is asking for him to get hurt."

"Is it a balance issue?" Tulio asked. "Because I was going to suggest we pry the others off now before any more of those golden nails get lost. Balance issue solved and away we go."

"No, it's not a balance issue. With three riders on his back and no horseshoe, he'll split his hoof or worse."

"Okay," Tulio said, nodding as if he had any idea what splitting a hoof meant for a horse, "but do we really count as three riders? I mean, Altivo here was trained to carry Cortes in full armor, and you've seen that guy. He's huge." Everyone paused to give a shudder at the memory of the man, especially Altivo. Then Tulio continued, "The three of us together add up to maybe seventy five percent of Cortes, eighty tops. So, as far as Altivo is concerned, we're less than one rider, right?"

"No, not right," Miguel said. He sighed. "We'll just have to walk."

"For how long?"

"Forever, Tulio, because unless you have a blacksmith and all his tools hidden somewhere in your clothes, this whole hemisphere seems to be a little short on people who can make a good iron horseshoe. No offense, Chel, your people did a beautiful job with what they had, but, and here's a phrase I never thought I'd be saying, there are some things gold just isn't very good for."

"That's your solution to this, just give up and walk forever?"

"It's the only solution!"

"Not necessarily," Chel said. All eyes turned to her, and Altivo cocked his ears forward with interest. "You aren't going to like it, but there's at least one other solution: Cortes." She held up a hand against any protests and plowed onward before either man could interrupt her. "He had other horses with him. What are the chances that he didn't bother bringing everything necessary to take care of them? I'm guessing, 'zero.' We just need to help ourselves to a little of what he has and then be on our way."

"You're right," Tulio said, "I don't like it."

"You're right about the rest of it too," Miguel said. "But, for the record, I don't like it either."

"I mean," Tulio said, beginning to pace, "this plan, if you want to call it a plan instead of a death wish, is crazy!"

"Very crazy, total death wish," Miguel agreed, nodding solemnly.

"You're usually the one telling us _not_ to throw ourselves headlong into danger," Tulio continued, still pacing back and forth. "If we can't count on you to do that, well, _I_ have plenty of experience being the sensible one, but Miguel is going to be up Rio Mierda without a paddle." 

"Hey!" Miguel squawked and swung a fist at Tulio's shoulder, on principle more than out of any great anger, but missed. In hindsight, it was unlikely to have been a coincidence that Tulio's pacing took him just outside of Miguel's arm's reach as he spoke his concluding statement.

Not to be so easily thwarted, Miguel dove at Tulio, but before matters could escalate into a wrestling match that would thoroughly distract everyone from the previous matter at hand, Chel called out, "Boys, boys," and stepped between them. Instead of pushing them apart, she wrapped an arm around each of their shoulders, drew them in closer, and held them in place. Her grip was surprisingly strong and difficult to wriggle out of. "Yes, it's a crazy plan," she said, "but you're going to do it anyway." It was not an order, but it was also not a question. It was a simple statement of fact, because she already knew these two so well.

"Yeah," Tulio said without needing any time to think about it.

"Yeah," Miguel said only a split second later and only slightly more reluctantly. "It's crazy, but...."

"It beats walking forever," all three of them said in unison.

* * *

They camped between the sprawling, buttress-like roots of a huge tree not very far from where their journey had come to its unscheduled halt. Dinner was easy enough to obtain. It was a simple matter of Chel starting a fire while Tulio and Miguel took turns dipping their toes in a nearby stream and trusting the other to grab whatever came to bite them off before any serious damage could be done. The fish they caught that way turned out to be bony but tasty once roasted, and the travelers learned that it was surprisingly satisfying to eat something that had tried to eat them first.

Night seemed to fall so much faster here than it had back in Spain, with the sun racing out of the sky and dragging the world into darkness with barely a few minutes of sunset in between. Even though they had not been walking for most of the day, riding a horse was its own kind of tiring work for those were not accustomed to it, and they all knew that it was only a matter of time before dawn would break just as hard and fast as night had fallen, so no one lingered around the small campfire for long before they began settling in to sleep.

Chel and Tulio cuddled up against each other without a word of discussion. Miguel stood so as to move further away and let the lovers have their space, but Chel shot out a hand, grabbing him by the ankle and stopping him in his tracks before he could get away.

"Hey," she said, "just where do you think you're going, mister?"

"Uh, over there," Miguel said, pointing at a spot on the opposite side of the banked coals of the fire.

"Seriously?" Chel did not release her hold on Miguel's ankle, even as he shuffled his feet awkwardly. Instead she turned to Tulio and said, "Do you want to be the one to talk some sense into him, or shall I?"

"Look, Miguel," Tulio said, "it's obvious that you think I chose Chel over you, and maybe I did at first, but that was a mistake, because remember what we said when the Chief and Tzekel-Kan wanted us to choose between a feast and a festival?" Tulio sat up as much as he could without displacing Chel too much, and he reached out and took Miguel by the hand.

"'Both is good'?" Miguel said hopefully.

"Exactly," Chel said with a smile. She finally let go of Miguel's ankle and took his free hand instead. Together, she and Tulio gently drew Miguel in to join them, and then all three of them worked to prove to each other that the activities of the night before had not just been a onetime deal.

* * *

It took them a week of slow plodding back through the jungle in the direction they had come from to pick up the trail of Cortes's army and then another few days to catch up to it, because Cortes marched his men hard and fast, barely slowing down as they swept through the small villages they found, taking what they wanted and destroying the rest, leaving nothing behind, not even survivors. It was a chilling reminder of what would have happened to El Dorado if Cortes had been allowed to find his way there.

Now, the four companions (five, if you counted the armadillo) stood on a small rise of land, peering across the tops of the trees at the distant flickers of firelight where the army had made camp for the evening.

"I still don't like this," Miguel said.

"You've said that five times in the past hour," Chel said. She was not exaggerating either, because it turned out that finding the army had been the easy part, and working up the courage to sneak into camp was proving to be much more difficult.

They were less than half a mile from their goal and had already taken off Altivo's remaining gold horseshoes in preparation, but every time one of them volunteered to be the one who would brazenly march into camp as if they belonged there and bluster their way through demanding someone take care of Altivo, the others argued them out of it. As a member of the native population, Chel would have been seen as one more person to conquer and enslave, but Miguel and Tulio were both wanted fugitives as far as the other Spaniards were concerned, so they were each at as much risk of enslavement or death and Chel was. None of them made good candidates to lead the mission. But it was strange what love made people do, so none of the three was willing to be satisfied letting one of the others putting themselves in danger.

However, they could not quite bring themselves to walk away without accomplishing their goal first, so they kept arguing while their tempers grew shorter. In fact, all three of them were too engrossed in arguing to notice that Altivo had slowly edge his way out of the small clearing they were in and vanished into the jungle quite a while ago.

"I just wanted to make sure I was on record as saying so," Miguel said.

"If you hate this plan so much," Tulio said, "then fix the stupid horseshoe yourself."

"I'd love to, but with what?" Miguel threw both hands out in a gesture meant to win his argument by drawing attention to the surrounding vegetation's blatant unsuitability for the task.

"I don't know, Miguel," Tulio said, failing to acknowledge the genius simplicity of Miguel's unvoiced argument. "I just make _plans_. You're the one who likes making _things_. And you're also always petting animals, so fixing Altivo's horseshoe should be like a dream project for you."

"I make musical instruments. You know, with wood and string, pegs and holes! Give me the right kind of knife, and I might be able to carve Altivo's hoof into a passable ocarina but not one I'd want anywhere near my mouth, because who knows where it's been and good luck playing it without him kicking you in the teeth. But even if I had tools, which I don't, a wooden horseshoe held on by wooden pegs is going stay attached for even less time than the gold ones did."

"Well maybe if you'd been willing to sit back and carve a lump of wood into an ocarina instead," Chel grumbled, "I could have taken Altivo down and gotten him his new shoes by now."

"You wouldn't get both feet into camp before somebody stopped you," Miguel said. "The goal is to stay inconspicuous here, and the Spanish army isn't exactly overflowing with women."

"Ha!" Tulio crowed. "If we're talking about inconspicuousness, then that rules you out too, because the Spanish army isn't overflowing with blonds either! Clearly, I'm the only choice to go." He smiled beatifically, closed his eyes, and took a bow as if he had just won a public debate against a great philosopher. Then, turning, he said, "C'mon, Altivo, let's go," only to be brought up short by the distinct lack of horse in the space where he thought Altivo had been standing this whole time.

Chel's and Miguel's eyes went wide as realization struck them as well.

Luckily, before panic could fully set in amongst the trio, the missing horse chose that moment to announce his presence with a quiet whinny before sauntering proudly out of the undergrowth, having clearly infiltrated the Spanish camp on his own and returned, looking like a whole different Altivo. His hooved had all been trimmed, polished, and reshod in shinning steel. Also, his hide gleamed as if it had been freshly washed, and his mane had been brushed and braided. Most noticeable of all, though, was the fact that he was loaded down like a pack horse.

"How did he...?" Tulio began, but he failed to complete the sentence as his brain kept trying to process what his eyes were seeing but he still couldn't believe it.

" _Why_ did he...?" Chel tried, but she too trailed off in disbelief.

"Actually," Miguel said with a grin as he opened a flap and dug into one of Altivo's newly acquired bags, "I think a better question might start with the words, 'What did he...?'" He held up some of the loot, spare horseshoes and a leather roll of horse care tools in one hand and copious strings of gold beads in the other. "And," he continued, his voice rising with excitement, "this was just what was on top!" Miguel threw the beads to Tulio and Chel, who eagerly caught them, and then he reached back into the bag and pulled out yet more gold.

Miguel and Tulio's epic twin squeals of glee echoed through the jungle, shocking sleepy birds out of their roosting spots. A half a mile away in the Spanish camp, many of the soldiers looked around curiously, trying to determine the source of the strange noise, but it was too high pitched for any of them to think that it had come from a human. Altivo and the armadillo both laid their ears back and looked annoyed at the disturbance.

"Good boy, Altivo!" Chel exclaimed and gave the horse a hug around his neck, being careful not to muss his new braids, which seemed to mollify him somewhat, while Tulio and Miguel grabbed each other by the shoulders and danced around in a giggling circle, their previous arguing entirely forgotten. Chel soon released Altivo and slipped into Tulio and Miguel's arms, and the three of them spun around like that for a few minutes more just for the joy of it.

They had to stop eventually, though, because no one can laugh and dance forever, not even people who had unexpectedly come into possession of a respectably sized hoard of gold.

"Where to now?" Miguel wondered after they had separated from their three-way embrace.

"Anywhere but here," Tulio said as he took the string of gold beads still clutched in his hand, draped it around his neck, and then tucked it into his shirt and out of sight.

No one argued with that. There was just one small problem, and all three humans had gotten far enough out of the habit of riding in the past week and a half that it took a few moments before anyone noticed what it was, but eventually they had no choice but to notice it.

"Uh, guys," Miguel said in the same worried tone of voice that had started this most recent mini-adventure of theirs. He gestured at Altivo, who stood laden with bags of treasure. When all he got from the others was a trio of blank looks (the armadillo was busy snuffling around in the undergrowth, looking for nighttime insects to eat), Miguel sighed and pointed directly at the treasure bags, saying, "We couldn't ride Altivo before he got his horseshoes fixed, but we can't really ride him like this, either."

Chel and Tulio looked at each other, then at Miguel, then at Altivo, then at each other again, then back at Altivo, then at Miguel again.

"This time it's different," Chel announced at last.

"Totally different," Tulio agreed, nodding. Then he stopped nodding and said, "Wait, how is this different if we still have to walk?"

"It's different," Chel said, grinning in the moonlight, "because this time we're choosing to walk while Altivo carries a big heap of gold."

No one argued with that, so they turned themselves south and headed out into the night, away from Cortes and his army and towards whatever grand adventure their feet would lead them to next. Whatever it was, wherever it was, it was sure to be the stuff of legends.

* * *

Luckily for everyone, the group traveled away from the Spanish camp for several hours before Tulio thought to take a look at the more deeply buried contents of Altivo's bags. That way, they were too far away for anyone to hear when Tulio's angry voice echoed for miles through the jungle, shouting, "What do you mean you wasted pack space on twenty pounds of apples?!? Do you have any idea how much more gold you could have put in there instead? Bad horse! Bad, bad horse!"

**The End.**


End file.
